The US has high confidence that a Palestinian rocket caused a hospital blast
The Gaza-Hiliexplosion: A Case Study in the Newsroom of the Israel Defense Forces, Twitter, the New York Times, and India Today
There is a reminder that getting the news right can be difficult after the blast at the Gaza hospital last week. The list of those news organizations that didn’t do well is lengthy and illustrious, including The New York Times.
The Al Jazeera video footage was shared three times by the Israel Defense Forces on X, formerly known as Twitter. At the same time as the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, the Israeli military posted a picture of a moving aerial object that they said was a rocket aimed at Israel. The Israeli military identified the munition as the one that caused the explosion in interviews with CNN and the UK, and India Today.
The Times continued to update its coverage as more information became available, reporting the disputed claims of responsibility and noting that the death toll might be lower than initially reported. Within two hours, the headline and other text at the top of the website reflected the scope of the explosion and the dispute over responsibility.
Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation and was more explicit about what information could be verified given the sensitive nature of the news. As has been the case for many weeks, newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures surrounding the biggest breaking news events to determine what additional safeguards may be needed.
The audiences’ perception of media’s fairness affects how much trust they have, not just in the credibility of specific coverage but the independence of their journalists. Readers and viewers may care about speed a lot. Even though stakes are so high, accuracy and fairness still matter.
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On the day of the bombing, Physicians for Human Rights called for an investigation to be held and for civilians to be protected. It notably did not project blame.
A series of prominent news outlets, and public figures organizations, appeared to rely on Hamas’ claims as authoritative, but little or nothing had been verified before publication.
The Israeli government has been accused of hitting civilians in the past. It’s credibility has been challenged because the Israeli military initially denied that one of its soldiers had killed a journalist last year.
The Times’ selection of journalists has come under fire in recent days. An Israeli diplomat chastised the paper for employing Soliman Hijjy as a freelance videographer in Gaza to document the conflict. Hijjy has praised Nazi leader Hitler on numerous occasions over the past 11 years. A spokesperson for the Times says the paper reviewed those “problematic” postings last year, when the issue was first raised, and took actions “to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards.”
In Gaza, even from Israel, it is almost impossible for outsiders to get into the area. Most news outlets are either covering it remotely or relying on local journalists whose families are themselves at risk from Israeli strikes.
And Hamas is the source of much of the information — and misinformation — about events in Gaza. Last week, for example, a Hamas spokesman denied in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep that militants from the group had slaughtered hundreds of civilians at a music concert in the Israeli desert, despite accounts by survivors, Israeli officials and journalists for major news outlets. (Inskeep pointedly noted that the attackers did kill civilians.)
Yet Hamas is much more than that. It is thought to be a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. More than 1,400 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostages in the most deadly attack in Israeli history.
Source: News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source
Palestinian chopper attack on a Christian-run hospital at the time of the bombing: U.N. and Israeli war crimes investigation based on independent footage
The BBC later issued a statement citing the full breadth of its coverage but saying that the degree of speculation in his report was, in retrospect, wrong.
The stakes cannot be higher. The sources can prove unreliable. Concrete facts are often scant. And yet readers reward publications that push out information instantaneously.
” I don’t believe open source intelligence will ever fully resolve the question,” says a professor at a university.
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering in the courtyard of Al Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday, believing the Christian-run facility would be a safe haven.
Just before 7 p.m. local time, militants began firing a barrage of rockets from a site west of the hospital, according to independent footage of the event.
Many experts, including Gannon, agree that the visual evidence doesn’t support a standard Israeli airstrike. Those strikes typically leave large craters, damage structures and spread shrapnel over a large area. Hamas said they haven’t found any physical evidence at the site, which would normally be there.
There’s a sound in the video that is close to the blast. That sound is marked by the Doppler effect, which can be heard in the rise and fall in pitch as something moves toward an observer and then away from them.
An nongovernmental organization called Earshot, which conducts “sonic investigations,” analyzed that sound. Earshot found that whatever fell very likely came from the east, not the west.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is the director of Earshot and he is saying that this is decreasing the chance of this coming from the west. It’s rocket science and so we can’t rule it out.
The evidence available to the public is not likely to give a definitive answer. Because the incident happened at night in an active war zone, the available video just might not be enough, says Marc Garlasco, a former United Nations war crimes investigator.
“I totally get why people are concerned about this,” he says. “It was a horrible thing, but man — there’s been a lot of people killed since that incident, right?”
He hopes the U.N. can eventually conduct a war crimes investigation to establish who was behind the explosion. Other issues need public attention for now, he says. Hospitals are out of fuel and there’s a lot to worry about, U.N. facilities are being hit.
The declassified assessment provides no specific information on where U.S. intelligence officials think a rocket causing the blast was launched from inside Gaza.
The senior official said that the agencies were still investigating. The official said that intelligence agencies would release information if the US got more information pointing in a different direction.
U.S. intelligence had high confidence that the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza was the result of a rocket breaking up in flight
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain said his country’s intelligence services assessed that a Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza and aimed at Israel was likely the cause of the deaths at the hospital.
U.S. officials estimated last week that between 100 and 300 people were killed, but said the death toll was likely at the low end of that range. On Tuesday, officials from the United States said they had low confidence in the assessment. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said the death toll was 471, a figure revised down from their earlier assessment of 500.
U.S. officials said on Tuesday that an accurate count of the people who died at the hospital was impossible to obtain because of a lack of independent sources.
Images of a fireball at the hospital site, and pictures taken after the fact showing burned cars in the compound’s parking lot, are consistent with a malfunctioning missile, according to U.S. officials.
U.S. officials said only light damage was sustained at the site, which is consistent with the premise of a Gaza-made rocket that broke up in flight, rather than an Israeli munition striking the hospital.
The officials said, however, that numerous mysteries still remained about the incident. Those include how many people were killed or injured when, by the U.S. account, the warhead of a Palestinian rocket landed in the parking lot of the hospital. There wasn’t a collapse of the structure, and little damage to the hospital itself.
American intelligence officials said Tuesday they now had “high confidence” that the blast at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza last week was the result of a Palestinian rocket that broke up mid-flight, and that no Israeli weapon was involved in the explosion.
The Israeli assault on the Al-Ahli Arab hospital: The Times argues that the missile was never launched near the Israeli-Gaza border
The spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was asked if there was a difference between the interpretations of the video given by The Times and American intelligence agencies.
Israel has fired more than 8,000 munitions into Gaza, in what has become a brutal assault, and had even hit the Al-Ahli Arab hospital with an illumination artillery shell three days earlier, according to video evidence and the hospital’s official Facebook page.
The missile in the video was never near the hospital according to The Times. It was launched from Israel, not Gaza, and appears to have exploded above the Israeli-Gaza border, at least two miles away from the hospital.
The Israeli military released a picture of a moving object that they claimed was a rocket aimed at Israel, days after the Al-Ahli Hospital blast in Gaza that killed over 30 people. The picture showed a moving object that the military claimed was a rocket aimed at Israel. However, Palestinians said it was a rocket fired from Gaza and aimed at Israel.